


something like this

by WritingOnTheWalls



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Attempted Fluff, Ben doesn't eat literal shit this isn't That Kind of fic I promise, Ben eats shit and Sammy judges him for it, F/M, Garbage Bears (mentioned only, KFAM spoilers to present, M/M, Moments, Notebook related angst, Potential multichap fic, Roommates, Therapy, What's a dialogue?, Will I ever stop churning this shit out (probs not), ben is a pikachu main, dorks being dorks, hashtag teareal bandits, i'm SOFT, mental health, pals, regularly scheduled sibling infighting, sorry Ben)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 11:24:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19666501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOnTheWalls/pseuds/WritingOnTheWalls
Summary: there's a whole lot more to sammy than what he shares on the radio.(they say life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.)





	something like this

The first time he wakes up in Ben’s apartment, it’s cold.  
Sammy is a warm sleeper, so he finds this more than a little usual. He tosses and turns and sweats and cries.  
  
He pulls his red comforter tighter around his shaking shoulders and closes his eyes and pretends.  
  
Sleeping was always wonderful, because sleeping meant being with Jack in a way that wasn’t fake. Being with Jack in the most innocent, peaceful way.  
Well. Mostly.  
  
Sometimes it was far from innocent, but Sammy misses the simplicity of laying together and holding hands and pretending everything was, and always would be fine.

He’s still pretending, but now it’s more than that.  
He pretends that Jack is there, or that Jack will come back, or that everything isn’t quite so messy and broken and hard. That he has love, and hope and happiness and that he belongs and that it doesn’t hurt it doesn’t hurt it doesn’t hurt.  
  
Sometimes he even half believes it.

Until the first time he wakes up in Ben’s apartment and it’s cold, and it’s so so so obvious that Jack isn’t here, and he’ll never be here, and he’s so **fucking** alone.  
  
He can’t even bring himself to weep.

* * *

Ben’s insistent that they eat dinner together. Not that Sammy calls most of what Ben eats _food._  
If he had known that Ben ate this bad all the time, he would’ve insisted they ate more than pancake puppies for breakfast. Sammy even slightly regrets the fact that he had claimed the strawberry perched ontop of Ben’s stack every morning for the past four years. There’s no way that Ben’s getting any vitamins at all, let alone staying anywhere near his recommended intakes.

  
Ben eats crap for breakfast, crap for lunch and crap for dinner. Most of the time he even eats crap in between.  
  
_No wonder he’s so short,_ Sammy finds himself thinking, often. He later berates himself, because Ben is kind, and Ben is fit, and Ben is the best friend he’s ever had. Does it matter what shit he shoves into his mouth? Or how badly it had obviously stunted his growth?  
  
He doesn’t say anything until a long night down a google rabbit-hole has him stressing about Ben’s hearthealth. He can’t lose Ben too. Not to something stupid like _Salami Sandwiches,_ French fries and _Teareal._

Ben comes home at 3am, Emily in tow, and stops mouth-agape in the kitchen.

Sammy is on his hands and knees, equipped with several spray bottles of detergent, two bin-bags full of wipes and a determined expression on his face. The contents of all their cupboards are spread out across the room, stacked into neat piles ready to be disposed of.  
  
(Ben only kind of complains, because this is the most he’s seen Sammy do in months. It doesn’t stop him from hiding sticks of salami around the house for the next three months though He’s only so strong.)

Emily is bemused, and dutifully helps discard the rotten vegetables that have grown…something at the back of the fridge (courtesy of Betty, who clearly had high hopes for them) commenting that maybe Benny has something in common with Doyle after all.

Sammy laughs at the face Ben makes at this, and the sound makes everybody freeze. Just for a moment, but enough to make Sammy cough nervously, before continuing briskly with his mission.  
  
Emily and Ben exchange glances, but the subject is changed.  
  
It’s been months since they’ve heard that sound, and something shifts.  
  
Ben can’t help but think the fruit he’s forced to eat from then on is worth it.

* * *

Therapy is nothing like Sammy had imagined.  
Considering the only first-hand account of therapy he’s received had been from an angry alcohol-fuelled Lily probably had a lot to do with it. 

But the therapist is… Nice.  
She’s young, and petite with kind eyes, and she reminds him of his grandmother.

He awkwardly shakes her hand upon introduction, and seats himself in one of the comfiest yellow chairs he’s ever had the pleasure of sitting in.  
It reminds him of a simpler life, of warm days splashing in salt-water and building sandcastles in the sand and of Jack.  
(But then, doesn’t everything remind him of Jack?)

He only flinches a little bit when she asks if it’s okay for her to take notes in a deep red notebook. It’s bad enough that it’s a god-damned notebook, but the fact that the colour is so similar to the _stupid_ eyes in his s _tupid_ dreams is just so _stupid._  


He’s proud of himself for that. For not kicking down the door in his effort to run screaming away from this nightmare that is his now.  
Even if he can’t put into words why exactly it feels like progress. It just does.

  
He makes it through one session, and then two. Before he knows it he’s run out of fingers to count them on, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world.  


He surprises himself the first time he says Jack’s name to her. He’s only really said it to Ben and Troy and Lily, and that’s not quite the same.

Her advice is mostly helpful. She seems like she’s trying to understand, at any rate. She’s not from King Falls, because Sammy had flat out refused to see one of the crackpot therapists in town (much to Ben’s disdain) and so he doesn’t go into specifics about things like The Void, or Skin Walkers or Ben’s unreasonable aversion to garbage bears, but it helps. It really does.

Being vague helps.  
Maybe because Sammy feels like he isn’t alone. Not everybody has to deal with possessions over the radio, but the feelings are the same. The struggles. The pain and the loss and the hurt.  
Suffering is universal, and he’s not alone in that. Not really.

She’s the one who convinces him to move in with Ben. She doesn’t push him to do too much, but always lets him know there’s an option to – if he wants it.

She suggests medication, but he doesn’t think that’s a suitable option. So they work on retraining his brain instead. He takes up meditation too, because Jack had been obsessed, and it makes Sammy feel close to him. It’s not easy when Ben’s home, but he manages.  
  
He starts leaving the house, too. First to pick up groceries, then to visit the library. Sometimes he goes for drives with Troy, or sits in the park and watches happy people. He’s a little surprised when he realises he doesn’t envy them anymore. He even looks forward to returning to work (not that he’ll admit that to anybody but himself.)

It’s not a day-to-day happiness, but he looks back months later, and realises he doesn’t want to die, hasn’t for a while. Not with any real urgency, anyway.

He doesn’t need to be reminded that people care, he’s reminded of that every time Ben’s face lights up when he enters a room. There’s just something different about having somebody with no real obligation to, care.

When he runs into her at Lake Hatchenaw in the summer, he doesn’t even pretend not to see her.  
(Lily is particularly impressed, though not for the reasons Sammy thinks she should be.)

* * *

It’s not like he’s never played video games before.  
He’d had a Nintendo 64 as a kid, and Ben has forced him to play Splatoon on many occasions. Jack even had a Playstation at one point, although when they were together it was mostly used to muffle the sounds of something that was decidedly not technology-based entertainment.  
Sammy’s pretty useless at video games, though. Can’t get his hands and eyes to coordinate, and everything moves way too fast for him to keep up. More than one occasion had found him murdering himself and all his team mates, and he becomes a prime target before giving up entirely.

  
(It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he’d happened to connect with Brad and Chad Higgenbaum who, upon realising who he was, had read a very explicitly detailed dream from their mother’s journal out loud, whilst cackling manically. Absolutely nothing.)

It’s different when Ben plays at home, though. He’s set up his Switch so he can play competitively online, and it’s like he’s in another world.

The concentration on his face is unrivalled to anything Sammy has ever seen – including his craze-fuelled notebook obsession, and the expletives that drop so casually from his mouth have Sammy staring at him in horror.

Sammy quickly learns that animals aren’t the only things Ben has…creative…names for.

  
Sammy returns home one day to find Ben sobbing in the corner, and is immediately concerned until he realises he’s crying over losing a _Super Smash Brothers_ tournament online.

Sammy kindly suggests they play something less stressful and picks up a discarded case from the table.

Ben only laughs a little bit when he realises Sammy’s picked up Bloodborne.  
(Sammy doesn’t even try to understand.)

* * *

Lily asks him about Doctor Who.  
It’s a strange question that he hadn’t been expecting.  
They’re lounging in the living area of their (reluctantly) shared apartment, Sammy on the floor, Lily hogging the green couch, pretending they each are the only occupants of the space.  
  
He’d been thinking about The Dark of all things, because it was easier than contemplating everything else in his life.  
  
She seems like she’s been stuck on the subject for a while though, so he replies somewhat cordially. This somehow turns into a disagreement over Matt Smith, which turns into snide comments, and scathing remarks and various shouts of EXTERMINATE!   
  
Ben walks in an hour later to find Sammy and Lily wrestling over the tv remote. Lily’s yanking Sammy’s hair with one hand, her teeth sunk into his shoulder, her free hand reaching for the remote he’s waving high above her head. They're both yelling for murder, so much so that they don't even notice the presence of anybody else but each other.  
  
Ben hesitates only for a second, before jumping into the fray, and somehow fleeing the room, remote in hand, the others hot on his tail, all three of them shouting profanities and laughing and completely in love with their lives together .  
  
It’s not always easy, but it works.  
  
And three hours later, when Ben and Lily have both fallen asleep midway through their fourth episode, (unsalted) popcorn scattered haphazardly across the floor, drooling and snoring all over their unofficial brother, Sammy can’t help feeling that, for now, this is enough.

(And maybe one day, he can share this silly, perfect little life with Jack, too.)

**Author's Note:**

> There will likely be more of this, which is basically just my attempt to not write angst for once in my life. I mean, it hasn't happened yet. But we'll see.  
> Thanks, as always, for reading!!


End file.
